Bernard Marcus, the founders’ of Home Depot, developed a very informal and store- oriented culture at Home Depot.
An oganisation’s culture can be perceived as its style, atmosphere and personality. For Home Depot, it was all about ‘entrepreneural high spiritdness’ which gave the members of the workforc the freedom to decide what they preceived to be the best for the company.
The company’s structure was said to be an inverted pyramid : the customers and store managers on the top and the top management at the bottom. This showed how everyone’s beleifs and opinions were aligned towards customer satisfaction and extreme personal involvement with the customers and the store.
Home depot had two set of beleifs : Firstly there are internal beliefs that include encouraging innovation at all levels and allow managers to take decisions for their stores independently and secondly there are external beliefs which focus on the fact that all actions should move
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All this also contributed to their informal culture.
The extra ordinary autonomy given to the store manager was one of the main reasons why employees were so happy to associate with and believe in the company’s culture.
One of the differentiating factors of Home Depot was that it incorporated within its members a major aversion to any kind of beauracracy and hierarchy. It was a usual practice at the stores to ignore all kind of paperwork that was sent to them by the headquarters. They undervalued such directives to the extent that they would throw these papers in the waste basket or mark them with “BS” stamp and send it back to the headquarters. They believed that all this was a waste of time of the managers and they had more important things to address to at their stores, the most important of them being : satisfying the
The Home Depot mission statement reads as follows: “The Home Depot is in the home improvement business and our goal is to provide the highest level of service, the broadest selection of products and the most competitive prices. We are a values-driven company and our eight values include the following: excellent customer service, taking care of our people, giving back, doing the “right” things, creating shareholder value, respect for all people, entrepreneurial spirit, and building strong relationships.”
Retailing building supply stores have become a popular retail industry sector due to increased public awareness and the need of many homeowners for the home improvement products. Back in the 1970s, long before warehouse stores ruled home improvement land, do-it-yourselfers shopped at “home centers.” These 30,000 square foot stores offered cheaper prices and wider selection of products, about 25,000 more than local hardware stores and eliminated the extra trip to the lumberyard. The dependence of many of these retailers upon the homebuilding industry for much of their business has also been reduced and the warehouse superstores, such as Home Depot, have become more important. The smaller companies in the
More savings. More doing. Now that’s the power of Home Depot (homedepot.com). “ The Home Depot was founded in 1978 by Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank, along with investment banker Ken Langone and merchandising guru Pat Farrah” (corporate.homedepot.com). The founders envisioned a “one-stop shop” for the do-it-yourselfer. The first Home Depot opened June 22,1979 in Atlanta, Georgia. The first stores had around 60,000 square feet that dwarfed the competition stocking over 25,000 SKUs much more than any other hardware store at the time (corporate.homedepot.com). As a facade to look like there was an abundance of merchandise The Home Depot would stack empty boxes on the shelves. Home Depot has come a long way since their humble beginnings.
From its roots as a vision in 1978 of a home improvement superstore The Home Depot has become a giant in this sector. Influenced by the “do-it-yourself” customer or the corporate contractors each policy and business plan is developed with a consumer stake holder emphasis. As its founders stated “We’re in the people business” (Planning), and this is maintained in its business structure today. Set up as a direct to consumer warehouse of home improvement and building products
Home Depot is the fastest growing retailer in the U.S. by some accounts. It has a fascinating history of innovation and entrepreneurship. The company had some difficulties in the mid-2000s that some attribute to cultural clashes. However, during this period the company was able to take full advantage of the housing boom. Yet when the bubble burst, Home Depot was forced to claim substantial losses. Despite these loses Home Depot has weathered the storm fairly well and is in prime position to take advantage of an economic recovery; if it ever comes.
Established as the older company of the two, Lowe’s ranks forty-second as a Fortune 500 company. Established in 1946 as a small hardware business, Lowe’s has grown into a 40,000 product, global market enterprise that consist of 1,710 stores nationwide expanding into the countries of Canada, Mexico and Australia (Lowe's Internal, 2010) Home Depot, founded in 1978, is the fastest growing retailer in the United States. Ranked twenty-ninth as a Fortune 500 company, Home Depot continues to remain the number one do-it-yourself retail store in America. These two companies may sell products of the same nature, but comparing their Code of Ethics is their way of setting themselves apart. (Home Depot Internal, 2009)
“Culture consists of the symbols, rituals, language, and social dramas that highlight organizational life, including myths, stories, and jargon. It includes the shared meanings associated with the symbols, rituals, and language. Culture combines the philosophy of the firm with beliefs, expectations, and values shared by members. It contains the stories and myths about the company's founder and its current leading figures. Organizational culture consists of a set of shared meanings and values held by a set of members in an organization that distinguish the organization from other organizations. An organization's culture determines how it perceives and reacts to the larger environment (Becker, 1982; Schein, 1996). Culture determines the nature
The Home Depot knows that they must stay on top of technology and management must be able to organize this function in a way that surpasses the competition, pleases the customers, and keep the employees satisfied.
Home Depot was founded in 1978 by Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank. In 1979, the first two stores were opened in Atlanta, Georgia. The Home Depot’s mission is to provide the products and know-how to enable people to take their dreams for their homes into their own hands. Home Depot sells an assortment of building materials, home improvement products, lawn and garden products and provides a number of services. Home Depot stores average about 105,000 square feet of enclosed space, with approximately 23,000 additional square feet of outside garden area. The company also operates 34 Expo Design Center stores, two THD Design Center stores and five Yard birds’ stores. Home Depot 's stores stock about 35,000 to 45,000 different kinds of products
All Organisations posses a distinct form of culture with some having more than a single culture. This culture is usually very difficult to measure, change and most especially change.
Organizational overviewBeginning in 1978, The Home Depot was founded by Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank. , the founders' vision of one-stop shopping for the do-it-yourselfer came to fruition with the help of investment banker Ken Langone and merchandising guru Pat Farrah. The first two Home Depot stores opened on June 22,
The Home Depot (NYSE: HD) is a home improvement, construction products and services retailer operating over 2,000 big-box stores in the United States and abroad. The Home Depot was founded in 1978 by Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank with the vision of one-stop shopping for do-it-yourself (DIY) customers, installation services for do-it-for-me (DIFM) customers and competitive products for the professional market. Their DIFM installation programs include products such as carpeting, flooring, cabinets, countertops, and water heaters. In addition, the company provides installation of various professional products like generators and HVAC systems.
Home Depot is the world's largest home improvement retailer operating in 45 states, Canada, Chili and Puerto Rico. Home Depot stores aim to serve both do-it-yourselfers and professional contractors with home improvement superstores carrying between 40,000 and 50,000 different products. Home Depot has also been listed as one of Fortune's most admired specialty retailers for the past six years. In order for companies to succeed in the competitive current marketplace they must consider not only the bottom line and their investors but also their impacts on the community, their employees, and their customers. Home Depot was founded on the idea that treating employees well is an important responsibility. Home Depot believes employees that are
First, the manager's team will begin to change Home Depot’s culture by creating a team-oriented culture. The managerial style is to treat the workers with the same amount of importance as the customers. After reading the article, one might think that the problem is that Home Depot has a fractured relationship with the store’s associates and corporate office. The manager's job is to mend the relationship between store associates, corporate office, and the customers.
Bob Nardelli’s top down approach that he was used to for so many years at General Electric was not the path to take for Home Depot (Brown, 2011). The managers at Home Depot were used to being independent and decentralized. They were not used to taking orders from the corporate office. In fact, they had always made their own decisions doing what they thought would work best for their stores. Because of Home Depot’s entrepreneurial culture that they were accustomed to for twenty-two years, the stores would not survive a top down approach to change. Moreover, a change that drastic would have to be strategically done to have any success.